Slide 12 of 26

Clipart and graphics add interest to your site and break up the sea of words. Clipart sites are abundant on the Internet, and most offer their graphics at no cost. Two main kind of graphics images are common:

• JPEG (image.jpg) - usually used for continuous tone (i.e., photographs)

• GIF (image.gif) - usually clipart (i.e., cartoon-like, with a few colors)

Both kinds of images can be created by artistically talented individuals. The premiere graphics editing program is Adobe Photoshop, which, although it can produce spectacular effects, has a steep learning curve. Most of the graphics on this site (over 450 images) were edited or created using Adobe Photoshop. Graphics editing is beyond the scope of this workshop.

Coding of your images on your web pages is critical. Images can take a long time to load. However, browsers will load all the text on your page at once if you define your images adequately. In order for a browser to load your text immediately, you must define the size of your image in the image command. Here is an example of an image command:

<img src="../images/columnposter.gif" width="76" height="360">

When you define the width and height of an image, the browser will leave a space for your image and draw the text while the image is loading. The result is that your page appears to load much faster than it actually does. Your visitor can begin to read your page as the images are loading. Studies show that the average web visitor will wait only about 10-15 seconds for your page to load before leaving to find a faster loading site. Most HTML editors automatically define the image size when you insert an image into your page. However, you should check to make certain that this is done on all your pages.